New Abilene Zoo Herp Building Opens

Well, this is what has kept Doug Hotle (Aquaherp) and myself from sleeping for the last 3 months.

As some of you know, I moved from Florida to Abilene, TX to take over as the Herp Supervisor for the Abilene Zoo about 2 years ago. When I came out to interview, Doug (the Abilene Curator) told me part of the job would be design and construction of a new Herp Building. After looking at the existing herp section, I knew the place used to be one of the premiere herp Zoos (first to breed Lepidus, etc) but now after years of herpetological neglect, it needed help and I wanted to be there to help bring it back to the limelight. I started the drawings the day I got here. Finally, about 4 months ago, we got the ok to go. And go we did!

We started with an existing building that was essentially wasted space - it was all graphics, with an 800 gallon reef tank as its sole living feature. We timed it and people spent an average of 22 seconds in the building. Yeah, that's not good use of space.

The official title is the “Creepy Crawler Center”, but more often than not, it gets called the “Venom Shack”. It houses herps and inverts from Octopus to Leeches, Deathstalkers to Pink-Toe tarantulas, Tentacled Snakes to Moroccan Cobras.

We built the entire thing in house, on a shoestring budget, and in 3 months. We stripped it out to the shell walls and rebuilt everything. Doug, myself, and Michael Flud (one of our nightkeepers) have basically lived there the entire time. My 2 keepers- Sean Eckert (Nitschei on here) and Jeremy Wilson (former intern at Kentucky Reptile Zoo) essentially kept the herp department afloat while I was immersed in the project as well as they spent every spare minute working on the new digs. We had a lot of help from pretty much everyone else in the zoo, our bird supervisor, Diane Longenecker, proved to be an invaluable help as a mural artist, one of the other bird keepers did more of the art work, Doug was the exhibit designer - going through almost 2 pallets of cement making rockwork, trees and vines. The rest of the zoo staff stopped by as much as possible and as soon as they walked through the door, were given a list of jobs to work on. We have an awesomely talented staff here!

All the graphics are on LCD screens, with a slideshow of pictures and information.

The grand opening was last Saturday (December 15th) and we were literally still running in the back doors loading snakes into enclosures as the press walked through the door. Now THAT'S cutting it close.

I'll let the pics speak for themselves….

Beginnings of the King Cobra exhibit waterfall…

Add concrete

Add paint and goodies…

Here's the beginning of the Bushmaster enclosure…

Add Doug and his new best friend - a Kobalt concrete mixer and you eventually get…

A Butress Tree…

Add more time, paint, goodies and snakes…

Anyway, you get the idea.. Here's some more overall shots.

Doug working hard…

Dwarf Caiman…

Exhibits….

More exhibits…

Retic exhibit under construction for Alice, our 20 footer..

Complete with a waterfall and underwater viewing..

A few more exhibits…

The Rattlesnake exhibit with montane and dry areas (think horridus and atrox) as well as it's own snake `den' that they have free access to and public viewing…

Great article, Larry. Awesome work you, Doug, and the others did. The exhibits turned out great. I especially liked the concrete/cement creations. Nice looking animals you have in the collection there. I hope to be able to visit it one day. Congrats on a job well done!

i just wanted to say what an awesome job you have done this far with your building and herp exhibits. everything looks very professional. i have a dream of having my own reptile zoo in the future after i retire. good luck and all, Dustin from Columbus, OH